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Apr 5

X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic #22-25

Posted on Tuesday, April 5, 2022 by Paul in x-axis

X-MEN UNLIMITED INFINITY COMIC #22-25
Writer & artist: Declan Shalvey
Letterer: Joe Sabino
Editor: Jordan D White

If you’re not reading this book, you may wonder why we’ve skipped issue #21. Well, it’s the first part of a storyline which is being serialised between the other story arcs, for reasons that aren’t exactly obvious. So we’ll come back to it when it’s finished.

In the meantime, this is the sequel to the first Unlimited arc, where AIM kidnapped three mutants and got away with one of them. Jonathan Hickman is no longer around, but Declan Shalvey, who drew that arc, returns as writer/artist to tie up the plot.

The unlikely team of Wolverine, Warlock and Strong Guy finally track the remaining stasis tube to an AIM base in New Zealand. You could be forgiven for thinking this is a case of an artist picking two characters he thought would be fun to draw, but heck, why not? They’re both gloriously ridiculous Bill Sienkiewicz designs, and it’s always fun to see someone take a crack at Warlock who’s willing to lean into the idea.

And it’s fair to say this arc is still mostly about Shalvey having fun with the vertical scrolling format. It’s not pushed quite as far as the ludicrously extended scrolling panels from the first arc, but there’s plenty of long downward scrolls here being used for pacing. There are some interesting effects you can get with that, since vertical scrolling controls the pace at which the reader gets through the comic, in a way that regular comics don’t allow. You can’t skim one of these things, or at least it’s a lot trickier. The technology just doesn’t allow for it. If the artist wants to force you to slow down, he can. Or he can find weird scrolling images to put in the background behind unavoidable exposition. There’s plenty of potential in all this.

If you’re looking for a comparison in terms of length, by the way, part 2 has 37 panels by my count, although some of those are long vertical scrolls. So you’re maybe looking at the equivalent of 1-2 regular issues, depending on how they’re paced. And so it’s a pretty straightforward plot. AIM actually turn out to have two more mutants in custody – one who’s a minor name but understandably wasn’t missed in the regular books, and a girl called Maddie who the X-Men have never seen before. When it’s not doing visual fireworks, the story is about who Maddie is.

This answer is the sort of thing that really needs a footnote. Maddie kind of sort of explains that she’s out for revenge on Wolverine for unspecified things, and mentions meeting “an older version” of him before, but none of this is likely to mean anything to you unless either (a) you know where to look these things up online, which really shouldn’t be essential for reading the Infinity Comics, or (b) you actually recognise Maddie, with a bit of prompting, from Shalvey’s 2017 miniseries Deadpool vs Old Man Logan. Which was great, and I’m fine with bringing her back, but you need a bit more set-up for any of this to work as a story.

Without that context the story is really just a vehicle for the art – there’s a token bit of Wolverine thinking that whatever he did in the future, he probably deserved it, and wondering about Maddie as one of the handful of mutants who outright rejects Krakoa, but really the appeal here is visual. Fortunately, it’s very good at that, and an illustration of what you can do in this format.

Bring on the comments

  1. Si says:

    Yeah, in comparison to the Juggernaut story, this one’s fun rubbish. I don’t know why Strong Guy is there, but I’m pretty sure all the other X-Men-ish characters were chosen solely for doing something interesting with the vertical scroll. Warlock’s scroll moment is kind of body horror, he’s just one long twisted and bulging neck that tapers off at the end.

    Are we not naming the other characters deliberately? Seems unusually coy but I won’t ruin it. It’s really funny to me that these extra characters were apparently hiding in the plane’s cupboard until their big moment.

  2. Joseph S. says:

    Shalvey mentions in an interview (pretty sure it was with Battle of the Atom) that in the first part with Hickman he was told to put whoever he wanted to draw in the tubes, so we got Kurt and Jono etc. It’s a safe guess that’s why we get Warlock and Guido here, and as Paul says, why not? Well, maybe because Guido is co-star of the Multiple Man plot being serialized between these longer installments? I don’t really mind, though.

  3. Si says:

    Oh yeah, in this story Wolverine straight up murders a helpless prisoner. He’s killed hundreds of AIM guys in this and the preceding story, sometimes just out of convenience, but this is next level and brutal even for Wolverine, even without the Krakoan laws.

    It’s easy to breeze past, because it’s just an anonymous AIM beekeeper, who is really rude, but it’s still right there.

  4. Rareblight says:

    You guys are aware that those stasis tubes on the waterfall are just empty decoys?

    Apart from those AIM guys, no one is killed.

    I wonder if we will see another follow up to this. MODOK mentioned Project: Tundra, and even thou it was Logan they are after, it would be cool to see AIM’s MODOK chimera.

  5. Si says:

    No, there’s a bit where Wolverine has an AIM guy helpless on the ground. Wolverine’s questioning him, and the guy says “go to blazes mother-loving mutie scum” or something, Wolverine says “snikt”, and it cuts to Strong Guy and Warlock grimacing and saying that he’s not getting up from that one.

  6. Orogogus says:

    The guy who goes “Unnf!” when Wolverine tosses him onto the pile of goons? I feel like that’s not one of the things people say in comics when they’re dead.

  7. Si says:

    Wait, has that been changed? I swear it used to have the AIM guy answer back, and both Strong Guy and Warlock commenting, shocked by what happened next.

    Now Wolverine threatens the guy, then just throws him away with no reply at all, and Strong Guy and Warlock look on, stunned, for no reason.

    Normally I’d assume I remember it wrong, but the scene makes no sense at all as it is.

  8. Orogogus says:

    Yeah, I believe it. As described it was a pretty bad guy thing to do, and the current text does read like an extremely slapdash attempt to paste over it. I feel like most people could have written better alternate text with like 30 seconds to think about it.

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